As the size of earthmoving and construction vehicles increases to gargantuan proportions, fastening together various components of such vehicles becomes more difficult. Such components as replaceable wear plates and tooth adapters for loader buckets are normally releasably secured to the loader bucket by conventional threaded fasteners, such as mating bolts and nuts. However, the increased size of the vehicle and components makes use of such extremely large conventional threaded fasteners time consuming and inefficient. Large and expensive service tools and wrenches are required to install and remove the threaded fasteners. When the wear plates and adapters are replaced or serviced, the threaded fasteners are often difficult to remove due to corrosion and abusive wear, such wear also precluding reuse of the fasteners.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems as set forth above.